B aker, J ames (1930–)

This book should command the attention of all Cold War historians. It is a book of prodigious research and immense erudition. Lorenz Lüthi has visited archives in the United States, England, Russia, China, Australia, India, Germany, France, Switzerland, and Austria, among other places. His aim is noteworthy: to “de-center” the Cold War. He argues that, for the most part, developments in the Middle East, Asia, and Europe had roots not in the global Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union but in “structural” changes in each of these regions that presaged the Cold War's end. He rejects the triumphalist narrative of some U.S. writers, minimizes the role of President Ronald Reagan, and claims that Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of the Soviet Union, did not want to end the Cold War and instead yearned to win that conflict. Overall, Lüthi stresses the agency of local actors and regional dynamics and claims that the capacity of Moscow and Washington to shape events was circumscribed by “decolonization, Asian-African Internationalism, pan-Arabism, pan-Islamism, Arab-Israeli hostility, and European economic developments” (p. 1).Despite the ambition and learning that inform every page of this tome, the book is beset with interpretive ambiguities and conceptual problems. Lüthi argues that the Cold War was not predetermined but was the collective result of “ideological clashes, unilateral decisions, political disagreements, and misperceptions” (p. 13). Its origins rest in the desires of the USSR to “overthrow the imperialist-capitalist world system and the establishment of a stateless and classless society across the globe” (p. 3). In contrast to Odd Arne Westad's The Cold War: A World History (New York; Basic Books, 2017), Lüthi pays scant attention to the economic contradictions within global capitalism in the late nineteenth century, the cyclical fluctuations of business cycles in the early twentieth century, the rise of the Left, the yearnings for structural change within capitalism, and the disillusionment spawned by two world wars and the Great Depression. Rather, Lüthi's focus is on imperial aspirations and ideological conflict. He elides geostrategic motivations, the underlying dynamics of global capitalism, and the legacy of World War II. He does not explain that controlling German power in Europe and harnessing Japanese power in Asia were key components of the global Cold War as well as the regional Cold Wars in Europe and Asia. He does not show how the perceived structural dynamics of global capitalism impelled policymakers in North American, Europe, and Japan to focus on integrating the core industrial areas of global capitalism with markets and raw materials in the “periphery”; that is, in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Africa. He does not illustrate how socioeconomic unrest and political turmoil stemming from the Great Depression and World War II created perceptions of threat and opportunity in Moscow and Washington that set the conditions for the Cold War.The great attribute of this volume is Lüthi's detailed description of developments in the Middle East, Asia, and Europe. Cold War historians will be surprised by his decision to place developments in the Middle East at the forefront of the volume (chapter two), even while he argues that the Cold War did not come to the Middle East until the Suez crisis (chapters 8–10). The Middle East commands initial attention because Lüthi focuses on the legacy of British imperialism and the desires of officials in London to remake their empire in the aftermath of World War II with the help of the Arab League. In this context, Lüthi luminously describes inter-Arab dynamics, Arab-Israeli hostilities, and the rise of pan-Islamism. He stresses Anwar el-Sadat's desire to expel Soviet influence from Egypt, the complex dynamics spawned by the Palestinian quest for statehood, and the repercussions of the Iranian revolution. By the early 1980s, he writes, “the Cold War ceased to be the critical structure that shaped the regional system in the Middle East” (p. 518). But it is not clear what he means by the “regional system,” or whether the Cold War had ever shaped it. It is also not clear what constituted the regional Cold War in the Middle East when so many of the wars were hot, not cold. The role of oil in shaping the local, regional, and international dynamics of the different versions of Cold War in the region goes totally unexamined.Lüthi's discussion of Asia is central to the overall thesis of his book. “Three countries,” he writes, “played major roles in Asia's Cold War. China, Vietnam, and India all were dynamic agents in the shaping of their own fates and not just passive battlegrounds in the global competition between the United States and the Soviet Union” (p. 115). Lüthi shows how the Sino-Soviet split, the Chinese rapprochement with the United States, the unification of revolutionary Vietnam, and “the collapse of communism as a unifying program for national liberation” (p. 537) reshaped the Asian Cold War during the 1970s. But here again it is not clear precisely what the Asian Cold War was, and why Japan is totally omitted from its discussion. Perhaps Lüthi would argue that Japan lacked agency, but even if that was the case the country was crucial to the trajectory of the Vietnam War and the U.S. role in it. Numerous historians—Howard Schonberger, Michael Schaller, Andrew Rotter, William Borden, and Robert Blum, among others—have shown in great detail how the goal of reconstructing and stabilizing Japan impelled U.S. officials to thwart Communist gains in Southeast Asia, create an independent South Vietnam, establish the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, and support the rightwing military coup, crackdown, and massacres in Indonesia. While ignoring these dimensions of the Asian Cold War, Lüthi presents fascinating chapters on China, Vietnam, and India, on Asian-African internationalism, and on nonalignment. He shows that the Asian Cold War had many manifestations and permutations. At different times, in different ways, these trajectories affected the U.S.-Soviet global conflict and were influenced by that conflict. But Lüthi also acknowledges that “the end of the global Cold War primarily required a strategic rethinking in Moscow which would only come in March 1985 with Mikhail S. Gorbachev's ascent to power” (p. 537).Strategic rethinking was necessitated by developments in Europe. Lüthi incisively describes the successful integrationist initiatives in Western Europe and the concomitant failures in the Soviet-imposed Council for Mutual Economic Assistance. He emphasizes the ability of Western economies to recalibrate, innovate, and adjust to changing economic and monetary conditions, and he highlights the failures of centrally managed systems to do so. He minimizes the role of the United States in the reconstruction of Western Europe, mentioning that it “provided a stable and supportive framework” (p. 380). Ultimately, the failure of Communist economies to compete and modernize contributed to the flagging popular support for Communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the end of the Cold War. But Lüthi does not make much of an effort to analyze the basic shortcomings in Communist systems, nor does he examine why and how liberal capitalist and social-democratic market economies were able to adapt successfully. For example, he describes the impact of declining oil prices in the 1980s and the constraints that imposed on Moscow's ability to subsidize the economies of its East European satellites, but he rarely makes an attempt to analyze the dysfunctionality of Soviet agricultural policies or the flawed operations of central planning. He stresses the resilience of West European economies but barely mentions the creation of social welfare states and the role of governments in providing minimal social provision and expanding educational opportunity, access to medical care, and support for basic research.This volume is a monumental attempt to de-center the Cold War and restore agency to middle-level powers and local actors. What it does is de-center international politics. It illuminates that much was going on in the latter half of the twentieth century that was not the product of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War but at times intersected with it and contributed to its denouement. Small powers had their own agendas, and regional dynamics had their own logic. In complicated ways, developments in one region influenced those in another. Thanks to the prodigious research of an author with staggering linguistic skills and breathtaking knowledge of multiple literatures, one comes away much better informed about the complexities of international politics but not equally enlightened about the Cold War itself.

The Cold War began in Europe in the mid-1940s and ended there in 1989. Notions of a “global Cold War” are useful in describing the wide impact and scope of the East-West divide after World War II, but first and foremost the Cold War was about the standoff in Europe. The Soviet Union established a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe in the mid-1940s that later became institutionalized in the Warsaw Pact, an organization that was offset by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) led by the United States. The fundamental division of Europe persisted for forty years, coming to an end only when Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe dissolved. Imposing, Maintaining, and Tearing Open the Iron Curtain: The Cold War and East-Central Europe, 1945–1989, edited by Mark Kramer and Vít Smetana, consists of cutting-edge essays by distinguished experts who discuss the Cold War in Europe from beginning to end, with a particular focus on the countries that were behind the iron curtain. The contributors take account of structural conditions that helped generate the Cold War schism in Europe, but they also ascribe agency to local actors as well as to the superpowers. The chapters dealing with the end of the Cold War in Europe explain not only why it ended but also why the events leading to that outcome occurred almost entirely peacefully.

The Cold War began in Europe in the mid-1940s and ended there in 1989. Notions of a “global Cold War” are useful in describing the wide impact and scope of the East-West divide after World War II, but first and foremost the Cold War was about the standoff in Europe. The Soviet Union established a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe in the mid-1940s that later became institutionalized in the Warsaw Pact, an organization that was offset by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) led by the United States. The fundamental division of Europe persisted for forty years, coming to an end only when Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe dissolved. Imposing, Maintaining, and Tearing Open the Iron Curtain: The Cold War and East-Central Europe, 1945–1989, edited by Mark Kramer and Vít Smetana, consists of cutting-edge essays by distinguished experts who discuss the Cold War in Europe from beginning to end, with a particular focus on the countries that were behind the iron curtain. The contributors take account of structural conditions that helped generate the Cold War schism in Europe, but they also ascribe agency to local actors as well as to the superpowers. The chapters dealing with the end of the Cold War in Europe explain not only why it ended but also why the events leading to that outcome occurred almost entirely peacefully.

At the 42nd New York Film Festival in 2004, an enthusiastic audience viewed a selection of propaganda films rarely seen in the USA. The exhibit, ‘Selling Democracy—Welcome Mr. Marshall. Films of th...

‘The origins of the Cold War in Europe, 1945–50’ traces the origins of the Cold War in Europe. In theory and practice, the Americans and British were reconciled to a Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. At the Yalta Conference in February of 1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin tried to resolve some of the basic disputes while also planning the war’s end game. Within weeks of the conference’s closing sessions, however, the Yalta spirit was jolted by mounting Anglo-American dissatisfaction with Soviet actions in Eastern Europe. The Potsdam Conference in July of 1945 and the Truman Doctrine amounted to a declaration of ideological and geopolitical Cold War.

N MAY 15, 1955, foreign ministers of United States, Great Britain, France, and Soviet Union announced to a cheering crowd gathered outside baroque Belvedere Palace in Vienna that they had put their signatures to a State Treaty for Austria.' For Austrians, significance of treaty was that seventeen years of occupation by foreign troops would soon end. Austrians could look forward to complete sovereignty for first time since mid-March of 1938 when Nazi Germany's machine lumbered across Austrian border. For rest of world, significance of treaty lies elsewhere. In Austria, as in other regions of central Europe, Soviet Union and United States and its allies came into conflict following second world war. On its face Austrian conflict concerned a basic disagreement over terms according to which Austria would be given her independence. The disagreement led to protracted negotiations, and was settled at last through agreement of United States, Great Britain, France and Soviet Union as well as Austria to terms of a treaty. Thus situation was a conflict which led to protracted negotiations of eight years and approximately four hundred four-power meetings at various levels,2 and finally to a peaceful accommodation of conflict. Such a course of events is not unusual in world of diplomacy. What is interesting and significant about Austrian treaty, however, is that negotiations themselves, concerning specific points at issue, had only slight relevance to final agreement. Because of her small geographical size, her relatively small population of seven million, and her limited resources, Austria was not a prize over which powers would be inclined to fight. Consequently, four powers could be expected to deal with Austria not within narrow confines of Austrian question itself, but in terms of Austrian question as a part of whole range of questions dividing Soviet Union from three Western powers; that is, in terms of what is called the cold war in Europe. The conflict over Austria is not only East-West dispute which his been settled peacefully since cold began, but it is only one, between conclusion of treaties of peace with former Axis powers in 1947 and 1959, which resulted in a treaty observed by both United States and its Western allies and Soviet Union. Thus, this particular dispute provides a unique study in peaceful settlement of a cold-war issue. As such, it ought to be studied more carefully to see if dispute and its resolution provide information helpful to

How and when did the Cold War manifest itself in Southeast Asia? More particularly, how are we to understand the connections between global great power rivalry and the specific regional problems and tensions which marked Southeast Asia in the five years after the end of the Second World War? What were the connections, if any, between the global powers and the nascent political forces of the region during this period? These are some of the issues which the five contributors to this collection address as they explore the origins of the Southeast Asian Cold War. These contributions challenge existing interpretations of the origins of the Southeast Asian Cold War. They employ new evidence gleaned from party archives and memoirs, and from Soviet, British, Australian, Dutch, Indonesian and Vietnamese state archives. They use this evidence to suggest that Southeast Asian communist parties, far from being totally autonomous on the one hand, or pliant tools of larger powers on the other, interacted with changing international communist lines as proactive agents. This interaction is the key to understanding why a regional pattern of increasing violence, and of decreasing cooperation with non-communist parties and democratic politics, emerged in 1948; while also allowing us to understand the uniqueness of the individual parties' paths to revolution. Discussion of the origins of the Southeast Asian Cold War inevitably involves examination of the policies pursued by the colonial powers returning to the region post-World War II, their relations with the great powers, as well as the agendas pursued by the local nationalist forces and communist parties of the region. One of the key issues which has exercised scholars minds in this area has been the switch to armed conflict by communist parties in 1948. The switch was rapid. In 1947 communist parties in this region were generally engaged in broad united fronts, and with the exceptions of China and Indochina, were mostly committed to participation in open political activity and trade union work. Then, in 1948 almost every regional communist party abandoned the broad united front policy and the emphasis on trade union work and legal political activity, and began pursuing a policy of armed revolt. Communist revolts occurred in India, Burma, Malaya, Indonesia and the Philippines in this year, and there were key changes to communist party policy in Indochina. Not surprisingly, people have long asked: Was this a calculated policy of extending the Cold War in Europe to a new front? It is suggested both here and in the papers comprising this collection that existing answers to this question, and explanations of this change, have failed to fully capture the complex interactions between international and local communisms, offering instead 'one hand clapping' explanations which emphasise either international directives, or very local and national factors. Orthodox Cold War historiography held that Moscow issued instructions, which were disseminated at two 1948 conferences held at Calcutta in India: the South East Asia Youth and Student Conference hosted by the World Federation of Democratic Youth, a Moscow-controlled movement (19-24 February 1948); and the Second Congress of the Indian Communist Party (28 February-6 March). According to the orthodox interpretations written in the late 1940s to 1950s, these instructions sparked revolts in the following few months of 1948. (1) Revisionist scholarship soon challenged the orthodox position. By the late 1950s, some academics were already arguing that there had been no clear instructions from Moscow, that the Calcutta Conferences were of debateable significance, and that the revolts were above all locally motivated and uncoordinated. The classic expression of this line was Ruth McVey's The Calcutta Conference and the South-East Asia uprisings. (2) This re-examined the impact of the 'two camp' line being promoted by Moscow and the newly formed Cominform in late 1947 to 1948. …

As the cold war in Europe was drawing to a close, the idea of repairing the continent, so that it might become ‘whole and free’, assumed an enormous power of attraction. The Russian democrats’ genuine willingness to rid themselves of the Soviet Union was not to be explained, to be sure, simply by the idealistic expectations of ‘a more perfect union’, or even by the more mundane calculations of the cost of subsidizing other Soviet republics through the common budget. The instability ushered in by the end of the cold war, the collapse of Communism and the demise of the USSR has been felt most acutely in the territory of the ex-Soviet Union. If Russia, the United States and Western Europe are careful enough not to create wrong impressions about each other’s true objectives, the former Soviet Union will not become a latter-day equivalent of post-Second World War Eastern Europe.

Reviews of Books

Kennan ’s ideas of 1947-1949 about waging the Cold War in Europe met with mixed results. He did succeed in helping to shape the Marshall Plan in three distinctive ways: the West Europeans assumed the major responsibility for devising a program of economic relief; the Soviets bore the embarrassment of refusing an offer of apparent American generosity and had to accept much of the onus for the partitioning of Europe; West Germany ’s economic and political rehabilitation was achieved within a framework of general European recovery. In Kennan ’s view, the Marshall Plan was, overall, the single most important step taken by the United States to promote a stable balance of power in posthostilities Europe.

This chapter examines the United States’ relations with China and other countries in Asia. It considers how a region wracked by insurgencies and wars for almost forty years was transformed from being one of the most disturbed and contested in the second half of the twentieth century, into becoming one of the more stable and prosperous by century’s end. The chapter begins with a discussion of the United States’ relations with Japan and then with China and Korea. It shows that at the end of the Cold War in Europe, hostility continued in the Korean peninsula, and that North Korea has consciously used nuclear weapons as a bargaining chip in order to ensure the survival of the regime. The chapter concludes by assessing the outlook for the Asia-Pacific region and future prospects for American hegemony in East Asia.

This essay examines materials published during the last decade or so on the origins of the Cold War in Europe and the Near East, with the goal of determining if something like a synthesis is emerging on the subject. Historians of America's foreign relations, particularly those of us writing on the Cold War, have struggled long and hard to forge a synthesis that integrates the domestic and international forces underlying American diplomacy. The results have not been encouraging, and there is even the possibility that such a grand, all-encompassing conceptual device does not exist. Our analysis of recent works on the Cold War, however, does reveal a number of common factors that suggest if not a synthesis at least a dominant approach based on the national security imperative. In other words, the bulk of this work demonstrates a pervasive concern with the way that policymakers perceived global threats to the nation's security and how they responded to those threats. In the best of this work, national security is defined broadly enough to show the relation between domestic and foreign elements affecting a country's safety and to include the social, economic, political, and military considerations that influence strategy, as well as the important and often subtle cross-cultural exchanges and the interworkings of the public and private sectors of society. Defined in this manner, the concept of national security encompasses not only the varied reasoned responses to danger but also those wide-ranging irrational impulses resulting from exaggerated or erroneous perceptions and from an often-obsessive concern with the credibility of the country's commitments abroad.

Journal Article Volker R. Berghahn. America and Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe: Shepard Stone between Philanthropy, Academy, and Diplomacy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2001. Pp. xx, 373. $39.50 and Ron Robin. The Making of the Cold War Enemy: Culture and Politics in the Military-Intellectual Complex. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2001. Pp. xvi, 277. $39.50 Get access Berghahn Volker R.. America and Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe: Shepard Stone between Philanthropy, Academy, and Diplomacy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2001. Pp. xx, 373. $39.50. Robin Ron. The Making of the Cold War Enemy: Culture and Politics in the Military-Intellectual Complex. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2001. Pp. xvi, 277. $39.50. Walter L. Hixson Walter L. Hixson University of Akron Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 107, Issue 4, October 2002, Pages 1251–1252, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/107.4.1251 Published: 01 October 2002

The twentieth-century rise of the United States as a global military superpower has resulted in the stationing of American armed forces personnel in dozens of allied countries and client states. On...

David Reynolds, ed., The Origins of the Cold War in Europe: International Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994) Melvyn P. Leffler and David S. Painter, eds, Origins of the Cold War: An International History (London: Routledge, 1994) Norbert Wiggershaus and Roland G. Foerster, eds, The Western Security Commu nity: Common Problems and Conflicting National Interests during the Foundation Phase of the North Atlantic Alliance (Oxford: Berg, 1993) Patrick Glynn, Closing Pandora's Box: Arms Races, Arms Control and the History of the Cold War (New York: Basic Books, 1992)